Page 48 of Make Me Yours
He shifted closer to me on the sofa, closing some of the distance between us. “So…” he prompted.
I chewed on my lip, deciding if I could tell him. This wasn’t how I pictured it. I’d imagined I’d have time to prepare what I wanted to say, be dressed in something cute—hell, at least be showered—and maybe tell him over drinks to soften the blow. But I summoned my courage. It was either explain myself now, or lose Cohen forever. I cleared my throat and began. “You deserve to know, I know that. And I want you to know that what you gave me, what we shared, it meant a lot to me too.”
He smiled and took my hand. “Just say it. What could possibly be so bad, Easy E?”
I shifted away from him, uncomfortably. I couldn’t allow myself to get my hopes up for him to just reject me in the end. It was the entire reason I’d tried to keep him at arm’s length, and then pushed him away. I wrung my hands in my lap. “I was engaged.” My eyes flicked to his, and they were concerned and curious, but not angry. Yet.
I took a fortifying breath, and told him the rest of the story, not once stopping or breezing by a single detail. Cohen stayed silent, holding my hand, waiting for me to get all the words out. He rubbed slow circles on the back of my hand with his thumb, not interrupting or asking any questions, just listening attentively. I was in tears by the time it was over.
I didn’t realize quite when it happened, but Cohen had moved closer to comfort me and soothe away my tears, slowly stroking my back, quietly whispering that everything was going to be okay.
When I realized that Cohen hadn’t pushed me away, repulsed or angry, or worst of all—emotionless over the fact I couldn’t have children, indicating he couldn’t see a future with me, all the tension of holding my secret in for so long finally melted away and I was left physically and emotionally drained. I curled against his warm body and snuggled into his neck, letting the tears come. Tears for Paul, for the baby we lost, for future little blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies with Cohen, for all of it. And when I was finally done, cried out and limp, Cohen picked me up from the sofa and carried me to bed, tucking me in and murmuring lovingly before turning off the lights and leaving me to rest.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Cohen
I stretched back in my beach chair, a bottle of beer dangling from one hand, watching Eliza splash in the frigid Lake Michigan waves with Bob. He was wagging his tail, biting at the water, but even his antics weren’t enough to keep me from watching her every movement. Her soft curves filled out that little bikini in ways that should be illegal. The only reason I was okay with her wearing it in public was because technically we were on a private beach and Aiden and Ashlyn weren’t bound to notice anything but each other at the moment anyways.
We’d all come up to the same lake house as last summer, only this year to mark my college graduation, and to celebrate with Ashlyn and Aiden who’d just returned from their two-week-long honeymoon in Fiji. Their wedding was simple, yet elegant and Eliza made a beautiful bridesmaid. I stood in as the best man, not because Aiden didn’t have other friends—he did—it was just that his memories had never returned and he felt closer to those he’d met since developing amnesia.
I pulled back a swig of my beer as Bob shoved his snout in between her legs and she toppled over, falling with a splash onto her ass in the shallow water. I let out a chuckle and watched her face go from surprise to irritation to a fit of laughter. She wiped her hair from her face and scolded Bob, though she was still smiling, so I knew she wasn’t really mad. He’d really grown on her over the last year. Well, that and she’d really changed over the past year, becoming more loving, more spirited, and more at peace. It had been amazing to see.
Once she stood and brushed the sand from her bikini bottoms, she jogged toward me, her tits bouncing in the most hypnotic way. I knew I’d never get tired of her body, and something stirred inside of me once again at just the sight of her.
“Did you see what that oversized mutt did to me?” She settled onto my lap, dripping with freezing water.
The ice-cold water soaking my swim trunks took care of any desire I felt stirring. I lifted her off me and wrapped her in a towel before folding her onto my lap again. She smiled at the warmth of the sun-warmed towel and nuzzled into my chest. It was times like this I felt proud of her, of the way she battled and overcame her fear to allow herself to fall in love again.
“I’m going to shower,” she whispered in my ear. “Want to join me?”
I pressed a kiss to her neck and nodded. “Go start it, I’ll be right up.”
She hopped onto her feet and dashed up the sandy beach toward the house.
***
I don’t know why I was so damn nervous about this. I wiped my palms on my shorts, and paced in the loft. The shower had been running for ten minutes already, and though she liked long showers, I knew she was waiting for me to get in there.
Shower sex had become one of my favorite things. Then again, I had a lot of new favorite things where Eliza was concerned. We’d experimented with just about every position known to man and even a few I think we made up. Not to mention doing it in every room in both her place and mine. After waiting so long for the right girl, now that I had her, I couldn’t get enough. And luckily, she felt the same way.
I took one last glance around the room, making sure everything was perfect, when I heard the water shut off. She was going to be ticked at me for not joining her, but hopefully she would understand why.
I could hear her slamming drawers and moving aggressively about the bathroom. Yep, she was pissed.
A few seconds later the door opened and Liz came out, hair brushed but wet, and wrapped up in a towel. I’d lit candles all around the room, so it was softly glowing in the fading afternoon light and I was sitting on the bottom bunk. These bunk beds were sort of nostalgic for us and I thought about how far we’d come together in a year.
My chest was bare, the way she liked me, and I was stripped down to just a pair of white boxer briefs that she bought for me, claiming they were sexy. I didn’t know about that, all I knew was I felt like I was offering myself to her, and I guessed that was pretty much the truth.
The scowl on her face faded away and was replaced by confusion as she took in the room. “Cohen?”
“Come here, baby.” I held out one hand and she walked toward me. I loved that despite everything in her past she trusted me completely with her whole heart.
A few months into us dating, she’d gotten too drunk out with Ashlyn one night and when she got home late, she’d come to my apartment and in her drunken state sort of admitted that she loved me. She kept patting the top of my head and calling me ‘Coh Coh’ and telling me I could never leave her. I knew what she was really saying—that she’d fallen in love with me, and couldn’t go through losing another man she loved.
After that night, knowing she was mine, it took our relationship to a whole new level. We hadn’t spent anymore nights apart, and though Eliza’s cats weren’t happy about the arrangement at first, the more she began bringing them upstairs with her, the more Bob grew on them. We’d worked through all her fears and insecurities, the biggest of which surprised me – her inability to carry a child. After that breakthrough, we’d spent hours together researching international adoption online and viewing pictures of the infants and children who desperately needed a loving home. Showing her I was very much open to the idea of adoption seemed to erase the last burden she’d been carrying around. We’d daydreamed about our future, traveling to Brazil, China, Russia, building a family our own way.
